Barack Obama's father and mother are seen in this file photo. (AP Photo/Obama for America)

(Newser)
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Barack Obama’s father once told immigration officials that he and Ann Dunham were planning to give their then-unborn child up for adoption, writes Sally Jacobs for the Boston Globe. The elder Obama had been under scrutiny from federal immigration officials, who feared that he had another wife in Kenya. In writing a biography of the elder Obama, Jacobs recently obtained a memo from 1961 that reads: “Although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away."

Obama was in the middle of applying for an extension of his foreign student visa, notes Jacobs, and likely thought that being married to a white woman with a biracial child on the way wouldn't help his cause. The memo advised officials to keep an eye on Obama and his “playboy ways.” But Dunham’s family says they never heard her speak of adoption, and the White House has said Obama had never been told his mother considered such a thing.

I am not offended or outraged by any of this -- we are looking through a 21st century lens at a time when bi-racial marriages were still illegal in a number of states. The immigration authorities had total control over this man's life and future. Obviously he would tell them whatever put him in the best possible light. No doubt the pregnancy was unplanned (by him) and in a time when abortion was not readily available, it is likely that Obama's mother and parents could have discussed the possibility of putting up the baby for adoption. In Hawaii' multi-ethnic society, however, it was far easier than in most placers for Stanley Ann Dunham to keep her baby and raise him herself. The irony of the birthers' opposition to the Obama presidency is that this is an "only in America" story. It is a story which should make every true patriot proud. It is a story that should give every young person in America hope.